No stranger to Ukraine's rough-and-tumble

Supporters hope Viktor Yushchenko can unify a nation where politics is often blood sport

December 23, 2004|By Alex Rodriguez, Tribune foreign correspondent.

KIEV, Ukraine — Two weeks after falling prey to dioxin poisoning, Viktor Yushchenko strode into Ukraine's parliament. The chamber fell still. Everyone gawked at Yushchenko's face, bloated with cysts and lesions. Yushchenko walked to his desk and slammed his papers down. "Why are you looking at me?" he shouted.

Later, he took the podium during the September session and read off names of prominent people who didn't survive the seamy, lethal underside of Ukrainian politics. A former national bank chief in 1998. A presidential hopeful in 1999. An investigative journalist in 2000.

"Don't ask who is next, every one of us will be next," Yushchenko warned.

Indeed, it appears Yushchenko was supposed to be next. Earlier this month, doctors confirmed he had been poisoned with the second-highest level of dioxin ever recorded in a human being. Somehow Yushchenko survived and now, as the opposition candidate in Sunday's repeat runoff for president, he embodies the prospect for change in a country that had wearily grown accustomed to politics as blood sport.

Many Ukrainians believe Yushchenko can transform their country because he seems miscast in Ukrainian politics, where big business dominates and lavish lifestyles are the norm. Many in Ukraine's ruling elite used their corporate wealth to reach the top; Yushchenko is a former banking bureaucrat who gained prominence by safeguarding Ukraine from economic collapse during Russia's 1998 financial crisis.

Everything about Yushchenko suggests he doesn't fit in with Ukraine's power brokers. He prefers borscht and sausages to caviar. Even his hobbies are subdued--beekeeping, blacksmithing and painting.

Critics cite regional support

His critics, starting with his rival in Sunday's election, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, argue that Yushchenko's large following encompasses just part of Ukraine, specifically the western half. Eastern Ukraine, home to the country's coal and metals industries, remains vehemently pro-Yanukovych. If Yushchenko wins the runoff, he still faces the challenge of somehow winning over eastern Ukrainians, who up until recently had talked of pursuing autonomy.

"Yushchenko cannot offer the nation a uniting ideology," said Stepan Havrysh, a lawmaker allied with Yanukovych. "He is very much like Yanukovych in this way, representing just part of the nation and not all of it. And that isn't good for Ukraine."

On Wednesday, Yushchenko addressed thousands of supporters in Kiev, praising them for their fortitude but warning of possible trouble during this weekend's presidential runoff, The Associated Press reported.

"The vote on Dec. 26 will not be an easy political walk," Yushchenko said in freezing temperatures on Independence Square to mark one month since the beginning of the so-called Orange Revolution protests. "There are some forces preparing to disrupt and they are preparing brigades, groups who are readying to come to Kiev."

"We will come on this square, this stage, after the vote on Dec. 26, and will stay until our victory is celebrated," he said.

With suspicion in the air, unifying Ukraine will be a tall order, especially for a former accountant and banker who, according to his closest friends and political allies, never saw himself getting involved in politics.

The son of teachers, Yushchenko, 50, grew up in rural northeast Ukraine, near the Russian border. After graduating with an economics degree, he moved through several Soviet-era jobs in agricultural finance. He built a reputation as a skillful banker, catching the eye of the chairman of Ukraine's Central Bank, Vadim Hetman.

Yushchenko quickly came to view Hetman as a mentor. They remained close long after Yushchenko was named Central Bank chairman in 1993. "Yushchenko used to say that Hetman was the second person, after his own father, who had such influence and authority over him," said Oksana Bilozir, a famed Ukrainian singer, a longtime friend of Yushchenko's and godparent to one of his children. "Yushchenko considered Hetman to be a second father."

As Ukraine's top banker, Yushchenko corralled runaway inflation, established Ukraine's national currency, the hryvina, and steered the country from the brink of default during the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

"Yushchenko quickly established himself as a successful economist," said Kiev-based political analyst Kost Bondarenko. "Moreover, his pro-West policies and his ability to keep the hryvina afloat during the 1998 crisis made him popular in the media and among Ukrainian reformist leaders."

In April 1998, Hetman was found shot to death in the elevator of his Kiev apartment building. The murder, widely believed to be a contract killing, took an emotional toll on Yushchenko. His friends say Hetman's slaying erased whatever illusions Yushchenko had about the nature of Ukrainian politics.

"He looked at it as the first time the Ukrainian government showed its true, real face," Bilozir said.